“I just feel…dirty,” Reeve said, as she and Dusk sat on the wooden front steps of the shuttered building across the alley from the former location of The Wailing Loon. Reeve held her head in her hands, wishing she could hide from the POV being recorded from wherever it floated nearby, but not yet willing to stop the recording altogether.

“They may have been wee,” Dusk said, “but they were neither helpless nor deserving of mercy. They left us no choice.” She looked down at her leather armor, which was covered in tavern swill, gnome blood, and singe marks. Noticing a red corner of cloth peeking from beneath her boot, she pulled a gnome cap loose from the assortment of filth on the boot’s bottom and flicked it into the gutter. She returned to massaging her right hip.

Footsteps approached, and Walter’s halfling voice said, “Hidey ho, Evie.”

“Hey, Dad,” Reeve said without raising her head.

“Everything OK here?”

“Peachy. Saw Mom.”

“You did! That’s fantastic!”

“Oh, yeah. It was great. A really touching family reunion.”

“Where is she?”

“Logged back out. Will hopefully pull us out sometime before winter comes.”

“Well…,” Walter’s voice lost some of its buoyancy, “that’s progress, isn’t it?” He looked between Reeve and Dusk, who was staring into the distance. “How, eh, did things go at that Whooping Crane Inn?”

Reeve rolled her head onto her right hand and pointed with her left. Walter turned and took in the pile of smoldering rubble in the lot next to where they stood. He looked across the way to The Golden Gander, where well-dressed patrons stood outside in small groups holding their drinks, still discussing the excitement that had just taken place across the street from them. He looked back at the rubble. He looked up the street one way, and then down it the other. He scratched his head. He looked back at Reeve, who was staring sideways, head on hand. He looked at Dusk. She raised her gaze to him.

“We found the guide we need,” she said, “and then we had to kick many tiny faces.” She ran her tongue over her perfect white teeth. “It, Wurmslayer, was not a skirmish that will be sung of by bards.”

“How ‘bout the market? Get what we’ll need?” Reeve said.

“Oh, yes!” Walter said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward his hammerspace. “Shipshape!”

“We could afford it?” Reeve said, thinking of the few coins her father and Dawn had taken.

Walter chuckled, causing Reeve to finally look up.

“Why do you have a black eye?” She said.

“Wurmslayer,” Dawn said, “so impressed a passing gentlewoman that she gave us half our needed provisions and refused any recompense.”

“In his eye?” Reeve said.

“Funny thing,” Walter said, “it all started with a misunderstanding.”

“You don’t say,” Reeve said.

“‘Twas a rich merchant’s wife,” Dawn said, “with attendant and two guards, one of whom wheeled on Wurmslayer and landed a shameless blow over an inadvertent bump in the crowd. But Wurmslayer won them over with his silver tongue and noble bearing. The gentlewoman soon would not let us go without taking from her purchases anything we could use.”

Reeve looked at her father, who shrugged his shoulders. “You know me, Reeve, people are my thing.”

Reeve returned her head to her hands. “Charisma forty-three helps,” she said quietly into her palms. And, she thought, it happened out of sight of my game feed, so that’s something. If only there was a way we could park him out of view of my game feed’s POV until we figure out how to get out of here—

“Well met, halfling,” the whispers-sung voice of the fallen elf said, and Reeve looked through the spaces between her fingers to find that the elf’s ankle-length boots had silently arrived next to her father’s dusty feet.

“Goodness gracious, there,” Walter said. “We should get you out of the sun. And maybe find some moisturizer.”

Reeve made herself again raise her head from her hands. The fallen elf’s hood was drawn back, and Reeve took in the cracked and peeling parchment-paper skin that covered the elf, including her hairless scalp.

The fallen elf patted Walter reassuringly on the shoulder and then turned to Reeve. “After seeing the type of attention you attract, I must raise my price to fifteen silver a head.” She quickly raised a hand to silence the objection in Reeve’s shocked expression. “Except this one,” the elf patted Walter again, “who seems wise beyond his years.”

Reeve dropped her head and pressed the bases of her palms hard against her eyes until she saw lights flickering.

“I am Silver Leaf. You may call me Leaf.”

“Reavyr,” Reeve said, lights still flickering in the darkness of her vision. She raised her head and nodded toward her father. “Walter, called Dad by me and Wurmslayer by these two,” she inclined her head toward the twins, “Tweedle Dawn and Tweedle Dusk. We also travel with a pony, which I haven’t bothered naming because I really thought it would have been ridden off a cliff by now, and two Companions, an American cheetah named Nyx, who accompanies me, and a honey badger, also without name, who follows and occasionally kills Walter.”